Well Played (Well Met #2)(40)
I couldn’t put my plan into action until Friday, when Faire was about to begin, so I had to spend the week going about my life as though nothing had happened. I wasn’t sure how long I could stay neutrally pleasant when Dex—Daniel?—emailed or texted, but he made it easy on me by going dark most of the week. I got a couple good morning/good night texts, and I responded so he wouldn’t suspect that my perspective on his messages had changed, but other than that I didn’t hear much from him.
That, to me, was a tick in the “It’s Definitely Daniel” column. Dex wouldn’t have anything to hide. In fact, he’d be looking forward to seeing me again with this new, richer relationship. Daniel, however, would most likely be filled with anxiety, knowing that the jig was about to be up.
But what jig? Wasn’t that the question, as Emily had said? Now that I was all but assured that Daniel was the one on the other side of the screen, I still didn’t know why.
The week seemed to take about a thousand years. Emily and I exchanged a lot of texts that week too. She offered more than once to help me face the MacLeans to figure all this out, and while the show of support warmed my heart, I ultimately told her that I needed to do this alone. This whole thing was so bizarre, and had the potential for so much humiliation, that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go through with confronting anyone if I had an audience.
Okay, if you’re sure, she’d finally texted on Thursday night. But you need to tell me EVERYTHING Saturday morning!
I promise, I responded. Wouldn’t that be a fun way to kick off Faire season? But she meant well, and there was the very real danger of me needing a shoulder to cry on.
Thursday night my tavern wench costume came out of its trunk and I hung it over the front of my wardrobe. All my accessories were together—I’d put them all away at the end of last summer, where else would they be? I’d gotten a new pair of boots a few weeks ago, and I’d worn them enough that they were broken in and comfortable. (I’d made the mistake once of wearing a brand-new pair of shoes the first day of Faire. When I spent that first night putting Band-Aids on all of my blisters, I vowed to never do that again.)
The last thing I did was get my dragonfly necklace out of my jewelry box. I looked from its sparkly crystal eyes to my wench’s costume and frowned. Simon had been right—the two really didn’t match. Emily and I had talked about getting new costumes, and she’d even pinged me to look at a few contenders on our shared Pinterest board sometime in the spring. With everything else going on, it hadn’t been a top priority for either one of us, but rather something we’d get to when we had time. And then we’d run out of time, and here I was with the same costume as always.
“So much for change.” But I tucked the dragonfly into my belt pouch anyway, along with the hair ties and pins for my hair. Let Simon complain about it once I put it on. I didn’t care.
One of the best things about work was that the office closed at noon on Fridays in the summer, but that Friday even those few hours crawled by at an excruciating pace. But then finally, finally, it was time to clock out, and I could get ready. At home, I switched my office scrubs for a soft pink sundress and kitten-heeled sandals and took extra care with my hair, styling it so it fell in soft waves around my shoulders. I stepped back and looked at myself in the full-length mirror and nodded solemnly. I looked good, and that was important for this plan. My phone chimed with a text, and my pulse spiked as I looked down at it. But I’d been expecting this text. It was time. I scooped up Benedick and gave him a kiss before I left. I needed luck to pull this off.
My hands shook on the steering wheel, and I took a few calming breaths when I reached the parking lot of the hotel. I slicked on my favorite pink lip gloss and checked my hair one more time in the rearview mirror before I got out of the car. My heels clicked on the pavement, then on the tiles of the lobby, and those clicks sounded like the stride of a powerful woman, which gave me confidence. I needed confidence right now.
I walked toward the checkin desk and waved at Julian, who was on the evening shift. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and waved it at me in a salute. There was that everyone-knowing-everyone advantage to living in a small town again. Julian and I had been in every class together since preschool, and I’d long since forgiven him for putting glue in my hair in the first grade. And now he’d grown up and gotten married, and he and his husband had stayed here in Willow Creek, where Julian worked at the hotel. He was our point of contact for the block of rooms we got here for the Faire performers, so we’d been emailing back and forth a lot lately.
He also knew when the performers had arrived and checked in to the hotel. So he could text me and let me know. And then I could come over here. That had been the first part of the plan.
The second part of the plan was waiting in the lobby, leaning on the checkin desk, scrolling through his phone. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black baseball cap covering a shock of red hair. My heels clicked their way toward Daniel, and my heart thudded harder with each step.
He looked up as I approached, and the molecules inside my body shifted when his eyes met mine. Part two of this plan was getting Daniel to admit that he’d been the one writing to me all this time, and that he wasn’t doing it as some kind of mouthpiece for Dex. Until this moment I hadn’t been sure how I’d wanted this conversation to go. Somewhere, down in the deepest part of my primitive lizard brain, I’d known that it hadn’t been Dex that I’d been getting to know all these months, and even more importantly, I hadn’t wanted it to be.